Make a WordPress staging copy and publish it

Copy your WordPress site to a staging address, try changes there, see what would change, and push it back to the live site.

A staging copy is a separate copy of your WordPress site where you can try a new theme, a plugin or an update without touching the live site. When the copy is right, you push it back to the live site with one button, and a backup of the live site is taken first.

Before you start

Pushing a staging copy back needs the live site to have backups turned on. Without them the button stays off. See Restore a backup to turn them on.
The copy needs a name of its own, such as staging.example.com. It gets its own address record, certificate and backups, like any site, and its own database. The live database is never used for the copy.

Make the staging copy

In your control panel, select My sites, then your live WordPress site.
Open the Apps tab and find the WordPress card.
Type the name for the copy, for example staging.example.com.
Leave the database on A new database for the copy.
Select Clone to staging.

The copy is made with its own database, and its WordPress address is changed to the staging name.

Good to know: the Staging copy card on the Advanced tab makes the same kind of copy. Select Create a staging copy there if you prefer.

Work on the copy

The staging copy appears in My sites like any other website. Sign in to its WordPress admin and make your changes there. Nothing you do on the copy reaches the live site until you push it back.

To refresh the copy from the live site later, open the live site's Advanced tab and select Copy the live site into it on the Staging copy card. This replaces the copy's files and database with the live site's.

See what pushing back would change

On the live site's Apps tab, find Staging: and the copy's name on the WordPress card.
Select What would a push-back change?

You see how many files would be added, changed and removed on the live site, and how the database would change. Files removed are most likely uploads made on the live site since you made the copy.

Push the copy back to the live site

Select Push back to production.
Read the question. It says how many files on the live site would be removed.
Confirm.

A snapshot of the live site is taken first, so today's live site can still be restored from Backups. Then the live site's files and database are replaced with the staging copy's.

Publishing is always a button you press. Nothing pushes the copy live on its own.

Good to know: if you connected your own coding agent in Studio, it writes to the staging copy only. Going live is still this button.

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